ECG monitoring of a car driver using capacitively-coupled electrodes.

Many reports show that there are a lot of traffic accidents due to sleeping while driving. Then, demand for measuring electrocardiogram (ECG) to estimate drowsiness of drivers has increased to prevent these accidents. In this paper, we propose an ECG monitoring system of a car driver using capacitively-coupled electrode. This capacitively-coupled electrode on which an operational amplifier (OP amp) was mounted was embedded inside a seat for measuring ECG signal. A ground electrode was placed on a steering wheel, i.e. ECG signal was amplified by a single-ended amplifier. Subjects wore their regular suits and pants made of wool, and ECG was obtained during driving at low speed on a rough road with one corner. Results show that our system can be used to obtain ECG while driving at low speed except some motion artifacts caused by the steering operation, road surface, braking, and accelerating.